[Leica] Re: Leica Users digest V5 #22

[Alexey Merz <alexey@webcom.com>]

Berthold:

I recently discovered a similar problem with Li batteries, and 
talked to my technician about it. He said that this is a problem
with most or all analog SPD meter circuits, not just Leica. One
should not use Li cells in any of them.

This may also help to explain why Leica has gone to digital 
meter circuitry in the M6TTL.

- -Alexey

- --------------------

Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 17:12:42 +0100
From: Berthold Lenhard <lenhard@verwaltung.chemie.uni-freiburg.de>
Subject: RE: [Leica] Re: Batteries

Hello,
I'm now following the leica-users-digest for more than one year and was
always only a reader. But the latest dicussion about batteries for the M6
makes me being astonished and forces me to respond.
When listening people talking about problems with the M6 and batteries, I
always have to remember the disastrous experiences I had with the exposure
meter of my M6.
In the german manual (until 1997; 13years!) for the M6 you could read, that
the meter always give correct exposure when there is enough power to
illuminate the LED's. The truth is, when a Lithium cell is going to its
end, there is enough power to ligth the LED's but the EV was (in my case) 3
EV and more overexposed. This effect lasts not only for a short periode
because it took over 100 exposuses on Kodachrome at my father's 85 birthday
in connection with 125th anniversary (can anyone imagine how happy I was.
btw: spare batterie is always present) to make me skeptical. The same cell
was also good enough for a lot of demonstrations for me, I couldn't believe
it, and the Leica-marketing-manager (Mr. P. Fischer) at product
presentation. He had no knowledge about that effect and asked me to contakt
Mr. S. Peters the product-manager for the M-system to get a competent
explanation.
So I did, but got no answer!
After four weeks I called him to ask about the problem and he told me that
Leica knows about that failure (also pro's criticized it) and he first want
to speak with the technicans. He promised me to recall.
No answer!
Another four weeks later I sent him a fax to ask for news.
No answer!
More than four weeks later I contacted a german magazine for
naturefotografy to ask for publishing a letter in the readers corner.
A few days later I had an answer in my hands.
He thanked for the constructive criticism and wrote that Leica has modified
the M6-manual (and they did, but nothing else). Not even any word like sorry!

That's not the end of the bad story, but I think it's enough now.

Best regards
Berthold
..........................................................................
Alexey Merz | URL: http://www.webcom.com/alexey | email: alexey@webcom.com
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